


like fire

by jaimelanniser



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Cousin Incest, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 13:37:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12013887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaimelanniser/pseuds/jaimelanniser
Summary: Jon and Sansa get snowed in while visiting the Winterfell crypts.





	like fire

“I can’t believe you left the door open!” Sansa complained, watching as Jon tried to shove away some of the snow down the spiralling staircase that led to the Winterfell crypts. All that did was let more snow tumble in its stead, and the exit remained as blocked as it had been moments ago.

Jon straightened up with a huff from his lips and rubbed his hands together, scanning the way up for any sign of light through the thick blanket of white that had amassed into the stairwell. “It won’t budge,” he sighed, unnecessarily, glancing back at her. “Did you tell anyone we were coming down here?”

“No,” she replied, a little more haughtily than she should, probably. “Did you?”

He shook his head, as she had predicted, and she sighed, falling back against the curved wall of the dark staircase, the flickering torch in her hand the only light around them. “Now what are we to do? Nobody will notice we’ve gone and we have no food,” — her stomach made a noise of complaint as if on cue — “no water…”

“We can melt some snow if we need a drink,” Jon pointed out. “Bran will notice we are missing, or your Lady Brienne. They will come for us.”

“It could be hours before that happens.”

Jon turned to face her fully, stepping down onto the same step she was, until he was right in front of her. “Yes, it could.” He took the torch from her. “Now come, we will be warmer underground.”

Sansa would have stubbornly walked ahead, except he now held the light, so she allowed him to guide the way down into the crypts again, back the way they had just come from where they had visited their parents’ tombs. It was still taking some getting used to, knowing what they did now about Jon’s real parentage, and not a subject they discussed on most days. Then again, Jon was not a very open person on the best of times, and this was everything but.

They found a space to sit against the cold, damp wall of the crypt, from where they could look up at Ned and Lyanna Stark’s stony faces staring back at them from the fire in the torches that alighted them. Sansa hugged her knees to her chest and laid her chin on them.

“I’m sorry,” came the quiet voice of Jon from her side after a few moments of silence. “I didn’t mean to leave the door open. I was worried about you slipping.”

“I can take care of myself, Jon,” Sansa replied, her voice hardened like it had become after years of bitterness and detachment.

Jon’s answering laugh was short, quiet, barely there. “Trust me, I know.” She was so different from the girl he had bid goodbye to years ago; it seemed like a lifetime. They had both been children; naive and unhardened and unrecognisable from who they were now.

They had never spoken about it, really. Sansa had never admitted to what exactly she had suffered at the hands of the Lannisters and Boltons. Jon had never admitted that he ought to be dead.

It made him shudder, and Sansa turned to look at him. “Are you cold?”

“No,” he replied, but rubbed his hands together despite it. Like this, in the dark pit under the castle, illuminated by torches that were few and far between, Sansa reminded him of another girl with red hair like that; the girl that had taught him how to be a man, in more ways than one.

_Kissed by fire._

“I used to like the cold,” Sansa whispered into her knees, and Jon had to turn his face to her to listen. “It felt like home. I missed it at King’s Landing. I can barely recall those memories anymore.”

Jon didn’t say anything for a moment, then, “We will make new ones.”

Sansa turned her face as well to smile at him, even as she shivered a little. “Yes. We will.”

So Jon smiled back; it was so easy to smile back at Sansa Stark. That had always been her strength, and he had feared it, as a boy, so sure that she wanted him gone. Jon was glad that they had put that behind them before knowing about his father. It made it more real, somehow. “Come here,” he called, quietly.

“Where?” she asked, skeptically.

“Here,” he offered, holding his arms out and nodding his head towards his chest. “I’ve been up North, remember. This is how to warm up.” Jon had never been a particularly affectionate person, he didn’t think. Perhaps because he had lacked a mother figure growing up. With Sansa, now, it was re-learning everything. How to be a brother, first, then a cousin, a partner in all of this. He felt like he was blindly stumbling along most of the time, and she seemed so sure of herself.

But she went, after a moment, shivering in her furs, and sidled up against him, leaning her head on his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her. It did help, she noted, taking a deep breath and letting herself relax. Jon smelled warm and familiar and comforting.

It slowed her heart, allowed her to close her eyes, knowing that whatever happened now, Jon would be with her, by her side, on her side.

The press of his lips against the top of her head surprised her, pleasantly so, with the gentleness of it all, the quiet affection with which he held her, and Sansa smiled, her stomach settling happily as a feeling that had become foreign to her over the years filled her.

The feeling of being  _loved_.

“You smell nice,” he whispered into her hair, and Sansa laughed. “What? You do! Like flowers, like spring.”

She turned her face up to look at him, her cheeks warm, and suddenly at the realisation that she was close, too close, only got warmer. Jon’s arms felt numb where they were holding her against him, and that look was a little too much sometimes.  
So he looked away.

“Jon.”

His heart was racing in his chest the way it had used to do in underground caves and amidst wildling hoards, but he turned back.

Sansa didn’t know what had come over her, but she didn’t seem to be able to stop. “Kiss me,” she told him.

It wasn’t even a question, Jon realised, bewildered, and confused, surprised, and while his entire body urged to follow through, his mind held him back. “Sansa, even if we’re not brother and sister…”

“Tell me you don’t want to.”

And  _that_  was a challenge. But Jon had been handling challenges for years now. And yet, how could he not want to when she asked like that? So he threw all sense aside for the second time in his life and kissed her, gently, just a press of his lips to hers.

Despite everything, underneath all the layers she had slowly threaded around herself for protection, under the steel she had mustered up her skin to be, Sansa still felt like a girl, a girl who was being kissed by a boy.

It was a kiss like none other she had ever received.

Soft, inviting, a ghost of a kiss, and it left her breathless and tingling all over. Her eyelids fluttered open and she looked up at Jon Snow. Jon Targaryen. Her Jon. She smiled.

“I’ve always wondered what that would feel like,” Jon admitted, out loud, and still just a breath between their faces.

Sansa peered up at him, curious, a little bit shy. “And what did it feel like?”

“Like fire.”


End file.
